The Morphological Catalog of Galaxies (MCG) in four volumes by
Vorontsov-Velyaminov, Arhysova, and Krasnogorskaja contains positions,
sizes, magnitudes, and descriptions of 29,000 galaxies on prints of
the Palomar Sky Survey from the pole to
= -30°. The catalog is
essentially complete to mpg = 15 mag.
A new system of description was devised, using the symbols that are
illustrated and discussed in the Introduction to Volume 1 of the MCG.
In philosophy, the system is similar to Wolf's scheme, but more
particularly to Reynolds's hope for a less simple system than Hubble's
(Section 3.2), where the great diversity
of pattern would be recognized in
the notation. This hope is realized, because the combined symbols in
the MCG are sufficient to describe a large variety of detailed
structural features. But as yet the system does not constitute a
classification of the second kind
(Section 1), where continuously varying
parameters are used to provide connective relations. This, however,
was not the purpose of the Vorontsov-Velyaminov descriptions, and the
system cannot be criticized on such grounds because the authors state
in the Introduction to Volume 2: ``Our descriptions do not [constitute
a] classification. They are merely a step forced by the diversity of
galaxies revealed by the Palomar Atlas and by the peculiarity of this
Atlas. [It] may be [that] our descriptions will help to elaborate a
new [more] appropriate classification.'' Undoubtedly features such as
the 
forms, the
rings, pseudo-rings, and peculiar arm structures to
which Vorontsov-Velyaminov has often called attention will prove to be
important when the detailed dynamics of galaxies become better
understood. At the moment, the other classification systems in general
use emphasize the more gross aspects of galaxy systematics.